Later Wittgenstein

Nauseating Flux: Iris Murdoch on Sartre and Heraclitus

by David Robjant

forthcoming, The European Journal of Philosophy
Article first published online: 17 APR 2012

I observe Iris Murdoch’s distinctive use of the word ‘flux’ in discussion of Sartre’s Nausea and show that her usage... more I observe Iris Murdoch’s distinctive use of the word ‘flux’ in discussion of Sartre’s Nausea and show that her usage is persuasive and revolutionary, first as Sartre exegesis, second as Heraclitus exegesis, and throughout as a contribution to the philosophy of language. Murdoch’s usage of ‘flux’ frames a comparison of Sartre’s Roquentin with other figures who have had similarly flowing experience but without nausea. Roquentin's plight is shown to be ‘a philosopher's plight’ precipitated by a defective theory of descriptive success. I then show how the Heraclitean fragments would support Murdoch’s treatment of flux and on close analysis contradict the established view exemplified in the work of Wittgenstein and Jonathan Barnes. Flux is not a variety of change, and the river image ‘cannot be analysed into non-metaphorical components without a loss of substance’.

Elucidating Forms of Life

by Anna Boncompagni

Submitted for the International Conference "In Wittgenstein's Footsteps", University of Iceland, September 2012

Although the expression “form of life” and its plural “forms of life” occur only five times in Philosophical... more Although the expression “form of life” and its plural “forms of life” occur only five times in Philosophical Investigations, and generally few times in his works, it is commonly agreed that this is one of the most relevant issues in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. Starting from the analysis of the contexts in which Wittgenstein makes use of this concept, the paper focuses on the different interpretations that have been given in secondary literature, and proposes a classification based on two axes of debate: the monistic versus pluralistic interpretation, and the empirical versus transcendental interpretation. After placing some well-known readings in the resulting scheme, such as those offered by Bernard Williams, Stanley Cavell, Newton Garver, Max Black, Naomi Scheman, John Hunter, Norman Malcom, Jonathan Lear, Daniéle Moyal-Sharrock and others, an attempt will be made to offer an evolutionary reading of Wittgenstein’s own ideas about forms of life. It will be argued that the empirical and plural view that seems characteristic of his writings in the Thirties, slowly turns towards a monistic view, that in On Certainty can be read as evoking the transcendental flavor of the Tractatus, but from within a deeply different, pragmatic perspective.

Newman and Wittgenstein after Foundationalism

by Angelo Bottone

Published in New Blackfriars, n. 1001 (2005)

Interpersonal Checking or Learning through Training? On the Social Basis of Normativity in Later Wittgenstein’s Philosophy

by Jo-Jo Koo

[Feedback most welcome; please do not cite or refer to this draft without permission]

A contested but familiar understanding of Wittgenstein’s remarks on rule-following is that he argues for a... more A contested but familiar understanding of Wittgenstein’s remarks on rule-following is that he argues for a communitarian or social account of normativity in his later philosophy. This has come to be called the “community view” of rule-following in the literature. According to this view, the normative bindingness of rules or norms on one’s actions must have a social basis, which is often thought to consist in other people’s checking and assessments of the correctness of one’s rule-following. Michael Luntley has recently mounted a forthright critique of the “community view”, arguing that it is either question-begging or redundant as an account of normativity. If his line of criticism of the “community view” is cogent, its devastating conclusion is that the communitarian or social account of normativity is wrong. If so, the normativity of the meaning of linguistic entities like words, and (for that matter) of nonlinguistic entities like signposts or hammers, could not be fundamentally socially constituted.

I will argue in this paper that while Luntley’s powerful critique of the orthodox understanding of the “community view” of normativity is convincing, it does not apply to an alternative understanding of the social basis of normativity that most communitarian readers of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (PI) have overlooked or underemphasized to their detriment. On this alternative view, the social basis of normativity does not fundamentally consist in other people checking and sanctioning the correctness of one’s rule-following, but in the fact that we have each learned through training, starting from a very young age in our lives, how to correctly and incorrectly perform “bedrock” actions and activities, i.e., those that are correct and incorrect without justification (PI §§198, 201, 211, 217-19, 241-42, 289). Although such learning surely begins through interactions with others (e.g., parents and other caregivers), the point of these interactions is not justificatory but instructional, in a distinctive sense to be explained in this paper. The philosophical claim, then, is that the social basis of normativity consists in learning the correct uses of words and things through training, not fundamentally in the interpersonal checking of such uses by others. If this is right, those who defend the “community view” of rule-following will need to significantly alter their understanding of it.

Althusser y Wittgenstein: ideología y análisis terapéutico del lenguaje.

by Pedro Karczmarczyk

Cad. de Pesq. Interdisc. em Ci-s. Hum-s., Florianópolis, v.12, n.101, p.4-30 ago/dez 2011

En el presente trabajo pretendemos establecer las bases para realizar una comparación poco transitada, la de la... more En el presente trabajo pretendemos establecer las bases para realizar una comparación poco transitada, la de la perspectiva de Althusser sobre la ideología y el abordaje del lenguaje que surge en la perspectiva del segundo Wittgenstein. Intentaremos mostrar la existencia de un paralelo entre las consideraciones de
Althusser sobre la constitución de los individuos en sujetos a través del funcionamiento de “la categoría de sujeto” y un movimiento nálogo implicado en las observaciones de Wittgenstein acerca de la constitución del hablante en los juegos
de lenguaje, que si nuestra interpretación es válida, debería describirse como “interpelación de los individuos a través de la categoría de significado”.

Insights into Wittgenstein & Curriculum

by Mark Carbajal

Graduate paper for my philosophy of education class...

In this paper I attempt to show Wittgenstein’s  connection between language and meaning via his... more In this paper I attempt to show Wittgenstein’s  connection between language and meaning via his masterpiece:  Philosophical Investigations.  As previously demonstrated by Wittgenstein, until his theory made print, the past had strictly followed the Aristotelian scheme of learning through logic.  Even though Wittgenstein had previously made note that what cannot be shown we must pass over in silence, he eventually reconsidered his theory.  What resulted was the culmination of over twenty years of radical evolutionary thought that resulted in Philosophical Investigations. 

The Brief Mention of Ethics in Philosophical Investigations (A Metaethical Extrapolation)

by Joey Miller

Submission to Nordic Wittgenstein Review

Although ‘ethics’ is only explicitly mentioned once throughout Philosophical Investigations (PI), there seems to be... more Although ‘ethics’ is only explicitly mentioned once throughout Philosophical Investigations (PI), there seems to be some significant metaethical elements that we can extract from its mention. In §77 we find the only specific mention of ethics, however, it is not clear what this reference means regarding Wittgenstein’s view on the subject. Since Wittgenstein is not attempting to give us an ethical theory, and his statement seems to concern primarily the language of ethics (thus, the structure of ethical discussions), his claim concerning ethics seems more appropriately placed in the context of a metaethical discussion. In this paper I argue that, according to Wittgenstein, ethical terms (using “good” as an example) share “family resemblances” (§66). I proceed by giving the context in which this discussion arises (this will be done by providing an explanation of §§66-76). Then, drawing on the insights, and context, provided by §§66-76, I examine §77 and give an account of how some of the major insights from PI apply to the realm of ethics (i.e., metaethics).

Acknowledging a Hidden God: A Theological Critique of Stanley Cavell on Scepticism

by Judith Wolfe

In the Heythrop Journal XLVIII (2007)

In his early work, the philosopher Stanley Cavell offers a sustained engagement with
the threat of... more In his early work, the philosopher Stanley Cavell offers a sustained engagement with
the threat of epistemological scepticism, shaped by the intuition that although (as the
late Wittgenstein shows) ordinary language use is the practice within which alone
meaning is possible (and which can thus not be further analysed or rationalised), it is
also a basic human inclination to wish to escape the limitations of the ‘ordinary’. This,
for Cavell, is the root of scepticism. Scepticism, on this view, thus appears not
primarily as an epistemological but as an (injurious) moral stance, which cannot be
refuted but must be continually confronted and overcome. Vis-a` -vis scepticism,
‘acknowledgement’ is the practice-based recognition of the world and other people in
their continuing elusiveness, which ineluctably involves risk, but just so is the only
way of knowing that is appropriate to and honours the (finite) human condition. One
problematic aspect of this (very fertile) approach is that Cavell’s secular viewpoint
makes it difficult for him to say both why the desire for a ‘beyond’ arises in the first
place, and why its expression as denial is morally wrong (rather than merely
misguided). His approach thus invites a theological ‘supplementation’ which grounds
the human condition in an original and real relation to God that is meant to draw the
believer, through Christ, into the divine life itself. Such a reinterpretation both
elucidates the concepts of scepticism and acknowledgement, and makes these
concepts available for a theological outlook that is able to accommodate Cavell’s
profound insights into ‘the human’.

Ludwig Wittgenstein: Later Works

by Annalisa Coliva

with D. Moyal-Sharrock, Oxford Bibliographies On-line, 2010

Was Wittgenstein an Epistemic Relativist?

by Annalisa Coliva

Philosophical Investigations, 33/1, 2010, pp. 1-23.

Moore's Proof, liberals and conservatives. Is there a (Wittgensteinian) third way?

by Annalisa Coliva

In A. Coliva (ed.) Mind, Meaning and Knowledge. Themes from the Philosophy of Crispin Wright, Oxford, OUP, forthcoming.

Human diagrammatic reasoning and seeing-as

by Annalisa Coliva

Synthese 2011, on-line first DOI 10.1007/s11229-011-9982-9

Scepticism and knowledge: Moore´s proof of an external world

by Annalisa Coliva

in M. Beaney (ed.) Oxford Handbook of the History of Analytic Philosophy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, forthcoming.

Wittgenstein’s critique of the idea that sensations are private and can only be known to the person having them.

by Lawrence Lazarus

"For a large class of cases - though not for all - in which we employ the word 'meaning' it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language." (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations I. §43)

by Lawrence Lazarus

Clear as Mud

by Dawn Wilson (née Phillips)

Published in the 'Journal of Philosophical Research' Vol. 31 (2006) pp. 277-294

In both the Tractatus and the Investigations, Wittgenstein claimed that the aim of philosophy is to achieve clarity:... more In both the Tractatus and the Investigations, Wittgenstein claimed that the aim of philosophy is to achieve clarity: to see clearly the logic or grammar of our language. However, his view of clarity underwent an important change, one of many changes that led Wittgenstein to write, in the preface to the Investigations, that his new ideas “could be seen in the right light only by contrast with and against the background of my old way of thinking.”

I argue that certain “grave mistakes” of the Tractatus were due to an idealised conception of clarity, and that a revised understanding of clarity is one of the main achievements of the Investigations. In the Tractatus Wittgenstein wrongly assumed that when we see language clearly, what we see will be determinate, exact, and complete. In the Investigations he realised that when we see language clearly we cannot specify in advance whether what we see will be determinate or vague, exact or inexact, complete or incomplete. I characterise this insight as a truism: when we see clearly, what we see might not be clear.

Wittgenstein wants the Tractatus to serve as a warning to the reader of the Investigations; his own past mistakes are instructive and this is why we should read the Investigations against the background of his old way of thinking

Gasparatou, R. 2009, 'Clarification, Elimination and Education'. Paideia, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 1-9.

by Renia Gasparatou

Gasparatou, R. 2009, 'Moore and Wittgenstein on Common Sense'. Philosophical Inquiry, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 65-75.

by Renia Gasparatou

Gasparatou, R. 2009, 'Education as Initiation to forms of life: Conceptual Investigation and Education Theory'. International Journal of Learning , vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 25-33

by Renia Gasparatou

Anamorphotische Aspekte. Wittgenstein über Techniken des Sehens

by David Lauer

in: Markus Rautzenberg / Kyung-Ho Cha (eds.), Der entstellte Blick, München: Fink 2008, 230-244.

This paper (in German) uses Wittgenstein's concept of seeing aspects to understand the peculiarities of anamorphotic... more This paper (in German) uses Wittgenstein's concept of seeing aspects to understand the peculiarities of anamorphotic art. I aim to show that Wittgenstein's conception of aspect perception includes the idea of conceptual capacities as well as of bodily techniques and hence bridges the supposed divide between receptivity and spontaneity. A comparison is suggested with some aspects of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of perception.